The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.

The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.